Stroehling’s work in the Royal Collection allows us to trace a rare example of continuity between the masters of the Dutch Golden Age and those of the early nineteenth century. Stroehling was brought up in Dusseldorf where a magnificent collection of the polished, classicising and elegant works (often on copper) by artists such as Adriaen van der Werff (1659-1722) had been formed by Johann Wilhelm II, Elector Palatine (1658-1716). Stroehling worked all over Europe but spend much of the first two decades of the nineteenth century in London; between 1810 and 1820 he was even styled ‘Historical Painter to the Prince of Wales’. Stroehling’s work elsewhere tended to be life-sized portraiture, but the Royal Collection has an important group of small-scale portraits on copper, executed with fine detail and a glossy finish; Joseph Farington perceptively referred to them as ‘painted in a Vanderwerfe manner’. Stroehling’s price for these ‘Cabinet Pictures’ was 200 guineas each, an impressive sum in the period even for a life-sized work. This is one of a pair of German princesses, probably commissioned by George IV (OM 1102-3, 405046 and 404867): though neither are securely dated, both are the same size and have sequential numbers in the Store of Carlton House in 1816. This princess happened to be George IV's sister-in-law: she is shown on a terrace in a garden, surrounded by four dogs; wearing a loose white classical robe with a blue shawl draped over her left shoulder.